This paper is based on a keynote address given at the first Australian Family Preservation Conference in Ballarat in November 1992 and addresses questions which need to be considered when transplanting programs from one service system context to another. A number of Australian States are in the process of introducing Intensive Family Preservation Services following the widespread adoption of such programs in the United States. These short term, intensive, home based therapeutic programs serve families whose children are at imminent risk of removal or who are being reunited with their family after being in out of home care. This paper argues that while such programs have the potential to provide more effective interventions with such families, placement avoidance on its own is an inappropriate outcome measure. Moreover, if the introduction of such programs is done by redirecting resources from other services, counterproductive effects may occur.

The present interest in US style family preservation services is the focus of this article. The article sounds a cautionary note in relation to the development of these services in Australia. It does this by drawing attention to a recent influential evaluation of these services and to the differences between social work and child welfare practices in America and Australia.

A study of the meaning of adoption and permanent placement disruption for parents and social workers confirmed that the experience is extremely stressful over a long period of time.

Powerful themes evident through the process of the study were the influence on the placement of stress in the parents’ backgrounds; the maintenance of the family boundary; triangulation of relationships; the nature and quality of interactions between parents and social workers; relinquishment of a placed child; the immobilisation of possible support; and research as intervention.

An assumption commonly found in the literature on parents of children with disabilities is that discrepancies between their perceptions of their children and their ‘ideal’ children are greater than those of parents whose children are nondisabled. Another assumption relates to their parenting experiences, which have been regarded as being different to that reported by parents of children without disabilities. Given that there is little empirical evidence to support these assumptions, a comparison of 58 mother-father dyads of children with intellectual disabilities and 24 mother-father dyads of children who did not have disabilities was undertaken. The findings of the present study revealed that parents of children with disabilities (a) perceived significantly greater discrepancies between their children and their ideal children, (b) perceived significantly greater limitations on their family, (c) reported significantly more worries concerning their children's development, (d) reported significantly more frequent disappointment in relation to their children's development, and (e) reported significantly greater impairment in emotional and physical well-being. In contrast, there were no significant differences in levels of reported happiness in parenting their children during the previous year. Furthermore, there were nonsignificant differences in the perceptions held by mothers and fathers. The findings have relevance to both counselling and service provision.

This paper reviews the Skills Enhancement Project for social welfare workers in child protection. It argues that both the description and conceptualisation of competencies is flawed. These enterprise competencies use a language that suggests expertise and control in human relationships that is antithetical to good practice. The push for incorporation of these competencies into the higher education curriculum is also problematic because of their messages about worker client relationships; the failure to consider the moral and ethical basis of practice and the assumption that professional expertise is developed solely through a technical approach.

I must admit at the outset that I only studied economics for a year. At the end of the undergraduate year, I sat an exam on the subject and passed. It was, as I recall it, a close-run thing however.

A number of us had already provoked the exam adjudicators by turning up late. Students were allowed into the exam hall up to twenty minutes after the exams had started, and this being the late 1960s, it was very cool to affect nonchalance by entering ten minutes or so late after everyone else had settled down. Such a late arrival not only gave the required appearance of casual unconcern, but also caused considerable disruption, especially if the latecomer was seated in the middle of a row of scibblers. Working one's way down the line of desks, loudly muttering ‘Excuse me’, ‘So sorry’, ‘Excuse me’, and so on was guaranteed to arouse the ire of diligent student and conscientious adjudicator alike.